The status of the Code of Medical Ethics: loading

This article was exclusively written for The European Sting by Ms. Luiza Merigo Santa Rosa, a 20 years old medical student who is the Local Coordinator and member of the IFMSA Brasil Unicesumar Scientific Research Center. She is affiliated to the International Federation of Medical Students Associations (IFMSA), cordial partner of The Sting. The opinions expressed in this piece belong strictly to the writer and do not necessarily reflect IFMSA’s view on the topic, nor The European Sting’s one.

From the first use of ethyl ether as a surgical anesthetic by Thomas Green Morton in 1846¹; the use of the autoclave in 1880 by Louis Pasteur and Charles Chamberland (equipment used in the sterilization of surgical material to reduce bacterial contamination)², use of extracorporeal circulation in cardiac surgeries in 1953 by Dr John Gibbon and his wife Mary Gibbon³, until the robotic surgeries employed now a days; medicine has been evolving and modernizing more and more to provide patients with a better quality of life.

The Code of Medical Ethics proposes some very important terms regarding medical responsibility to the patient. The malpractice is attributed to the professional who performs any procedure without proper knowledge, and errs. Already the recklessness, would be attributed to the doctor who had the necessary knowledge to intervene, but errs. In turn, negligence is the omission of this trained professional in the face of the need for his intervention⁴.

We can note that within these three modalities of failure, medical training and the updating of this prior knowledge are very important in determining the severity of the practitioner’s actions. Therefore, in order for health professionals to avoid these deviations from the code of ethics, it is necessary to adapt curricula and use the refresher courses to accompany the new technological demands on health.

Future health professionals should leave the universities with the proper command of how to use the equipments, know their indications or limitations and interpret the basics medical exams as electrocardiogram, electroencephalogram or even a CT scan. This is necessary because a misuse of the exams and poor interpretations can cust patient’s life (either by patients in cases of urgent who doesn’t time to waste or to being a potential iatrogenic if bad employed).

When passing through surgical residences, students should also observe and participate in surgeries involving robots so that there is at least a first contact and basic mastery of the new health trends. Still, after completing the medical school training, learning about new technologies should not stop, to always offer patients the best solution to theirs problems. However, in order to make this update of knowledge more attractive for trained professionals, it is necessary to create more refresher courses and to increase their dissemination, to reduce their enrollment value and to use the resources of distance learning for professionals with low availability of time.

As an insertion of technology in the field of health is something inevitable when seeking a cure, reduce pain or give comfort to the soul, as was his father or medicine, Hippocrates, in his oath; a good medical foundation both in the baccalaureate and in the residence, it is indispensable to lapidate the knowledge of the past with the new technologies in the healt.

Luiza Merigo Santa Rosa is 20 years old. She is Local Coordinator and member of the IFMSA Brasil Unicesumar Scientific Research Center; she was born in Curitiba-PR / BR, she is an academic of the second year of medicine. She is a member of the League of Family and Community Medicine and she participates in the Unicesumar Scientific Initiation Project. She believes that medicine goes beyond the medical trine, patient, and disease; medicine is empathy, communication and technology. Medicine is love.